Who shall I train with?

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I have been working in IT for the past 5 years.

The initial 2 years I had to leave as the call centres as 1st line support moved to another country and my third job involved in desktop field support, I was made redundant in just 5months.

Since then I found a job for a reputable company startup doing service desk work (only via phone and email) for 6 months.
From there I was able to prove I had desktop skills and moved to the desktop team as a contractor.

Since then (2.5 years) I didn't really expand on my skill set and I got more involved with Venue Technology Setups, Venue Incident Management and and Team Leading to setup technology and support them.

There was nothing over complicated about the support as it was mainly desktop and laptops running windows 7, Microsoft Office and basic network trouble shooting.

We did do basic AD administration on server 2008 but anything over complicated, 3rd line would take care of.

I have now finished my full length contract and come out thinking I havn't learned that much in the last 2 years in terms of support skills and really just improved on my team/project leading, incident management and change analyst skills.

To me it seems I need to take up some courses but not sure which direction to turn.
I enjoy the support roles and would like to improve my technical skill set.

I was thinking maybe getting A+, MCITP etc so it looks better on my CV with the certification and at the same time it refreshing my skill sets.

What self study or in house company are best for courses?

Thanks

 

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I think with your experience A+ isnt needed. I would have a look at the MCITP: Server Administrator and maybe back it up with the MCITP:Enterprise Desktop Administrator. Although with those two that is 5 exams which costs around £400 using a voucher on the MCITP:SA to get an exam free and would require a fair amount of study even if you know your stuff.
As to whether you do that at a training centre or self study thats up to you. I can see the merits of both but personally prefer to self study mostly becuase of the cost. Resources for self study would include any training material by the big study guys like, Boson, Trainsignal, CBT Nuggets and Microsoft Press books.

Prince 2 or ITIL might help show your project and management skills if thats the route you wanted to go down.

 

Thank you for your response.

I am planning on creating my own little test environment.
What would be the best self study tutorial type of guide so I can learn by watching and implementing at the same time?

Many Thanks

 

The Microsoft Press Books have excerises with each chapter. A test environment is a good idea, doesnt have to be madly spec'd just good enough to run a couple of VMs.